Why this matters

•       This research will help to identify people who can successfully perform a wide range of procedures, namely military personnel, as they often are sought to undertake complex tasks.
•       Results from the study could offer new training approaches to help make people more resilient to effects of stressors, such as sleep deprivation or task interruption. 

A team of cognitive psychologists from the Michigan State University Department of Psychology have received a $860,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research to develop assessments for identifying people who are good at performing complex procedural tasks, even under challenging conditions like sleep deprivation and frequent interruptions.

“If we develop the right tools, we can identify people who are going to be better at performing a wide range of procedures. This is important because Navy personnel are increasingly called upon to do lots of different tasks as military systems become more complex,” said Erik Altmann, lead investigator of the study and professor in MSU’s psychology department. “The goal is to get the right person in the right job at the right time.”

This multiyear study will look at individual differences in placekeeping, which is the cognitive ability to remember what step you are on in a procedural sequence. The researchers will also test whether incorporating task interruptions during training can help personnel develop cognitive strategies for placekeeping during deployment, when personnel may be sleep-deprived.

“We know that under conditions of sleep deprivation, people make more procedural errors, especially when they’re interrupted in the middle of a task. Procedural errors can be catastrophic, so the Navy is interested in reducing them,” said Altmann.

The research team, which also includes cognitive psychologists Kimberly Fenn and Zach Hambrick, has been funded since 2016 by the Office of Naval Research, with past studies looking at multitasking and the effect of sleep on cognitive performance.

The results of this study could improve personnel selection and classification in the Navy and in other fields where procedural accuracy is critical; results also could suggest approaches to training that make people more resilient to effects of stressors like sleep deprivation and task interruption.